Aug 28, 2011, 5:50PM: Dumped 2 tablespoons of nonfat cow's milk powder as thickener into clear plastic after market container, filled with store bought 2% pasteurized homogenized cow's milk from jug in fridge to 1 litre level mark. Stirred with spoon to dissolve milk powder, placed in microwave, zapped for 6 minutes to denature milk, had to stir once to even out temperature as top starting to boil/foam over. Measured at 187 F/86 C, left container on countertop without lid to cool.

Aug 28, 2011, 8:00PM: Checked, milk at 98 F, added 1/2 package of almost 2 year old (to me) manufactured freeze dried yogurt culture, stirred with spoon up and down for 1 minute to distibute, placed container in machine and lid on machine to ferment and set dial to 8 as reminder when started fermentation.

I usually add 100g of full fat milk powder (skim powder doesn't give enough body I think) to 1 litre of UHT milk, mix it well add the culture and put in the machine from night. No heating, no scalding. In the morning, it goes into the fridge. Recently, I also started adding 2 tbsp kefir along with the culture and the acidity was just perfect.

I experimented with topiaca flour but didn't like to add "heating step" to my already busy schedule.

Oh BTW, I have the exact same machine but different brand. I also add water into the container to create a water jacket around the yogurt cup. Water is a better heat transmitter than air.

Hi Gurkan, yep understand that with UHT you can skip the cook and denature step, but here UHT is rare and thus about 3X the price of regular store bought P&H cow milk. That said I'll but a liter/quart and give it a try.

My wife bought the non-fat powdered milk, once that's gone I'll try the whole dry milk, or I could also buy whole rather than 2% milk.

On using water around container, good idea except I assumed my/our unit did not have a thermostat, but just a dumb heater so if added water it wouldn;t go or stay at correct temp.